little black journal

I am now in the midst of a four-day intensive encaustic workshop at a local art school.  Eight hours a day of slopping wax on pieces of plywood, melting it with my new blow torch, layering on sheets of tissue paper, coatings of shellac, or whatever other random materials my experimental instructors have on hand, and generally just making a lovely mess of things.  It’s all a bit overwhelming, and my inability to really control this new medium can be frustrating, but I love it.  It’s been awhile since I’ve really been immersed in an art project, and it feels good.  Here’s a small sneak peak of things…

After what felt like a long work week, we declared Saturday a day of relaxation and indulgence.  There are few things I love more than having the freedom to spend a Saturday any which way we please.  And so indulgence number one came in the form of a latte and a pain au chocolat from Cafe Besalu – a small bakery/cafe in Ballard known for their deliciously buttery breakfast treats.  I truly believe chocolate croissants are one of God’s greatest gifts to mankind, and this one had to have been picked out especially for me from the Big Guy himself.  So light and flaky, rich and buttery, perfectly…perfect.  Yum.

Post-pastries, we hopped back in the car, and before Shane had even pulled away from the curb, I was thinking about how nice it would be to head home, get back into my pajamas, and spend the day cozied up on the couch.  My husband, however, had other plans, and decided that since our breakfast mission had been completed, he was ready for lunch and wanted to swing by Safeco Field to check out ‘Mobile Food Chowdown’ – a one-day-only gathering of Seattle’s and Portland’s best food carts.  In his defense, he had run 8 miles earlier that morning, so I obliged, thinking I could maybe make room in my stomach for a good taco or a small slice of pizza.  Unfortunately, by the time we arrived at the scene, the lines were already unbearably long for several of the carts, but Shane scored a tasty little burger from Skillet, and I waited in line for 45 minutes for an order of fries from Portland’s ‘Potato Champion’.  Yummy, but hardly worth the wait.  Ah, well, it was still a good day to be outside, and I love Pioneer Square on a clear, crisp day.

The rest of the afternoon was spent at home, reading and watching movies, basking in the laziness that was bound to follow such a decadent morning.  Then evening came, and wouldn’t you know it, Nancy, La V, and I had dinner reservations at Lark, which meant: more eating!  Yay!  We ordered plates of creamy cheeses, roasted duck leg, bacon-glazed kale, and ricotta gnudi, and ate ’till we could eat no more.  There was a point in the evening – I think it was as I was dipping my spoon into the dark chocolate mousse, served with white chocolate sorbet – when I thought, “Hmmmm…will I regret this when I’m pulling out my swimsuit for our vacation to Mexico next month?”  Then I tasted the cashew butter that had been spread on the plate right next to the chocolate, and I thought, “Nah.  Totally worth it.”  It was a perfect three-hour meal, full of good food that was only made better by the company of my lovely friends.

And so Saturday Splurge-Fest came to a close.  And once again, all was right with the world.

A few more pretty little drawing/collages, and now I’m ready to move on to something else.  These have been fun, and it’s nice to have a group of pieces that comprise a sort of ‘series’, but they’re feeling a little cute-sy (case in point: see butterfly below), so for the next few sketches, look for something messier, free-er, and more abstract – might be time to time to pull out the fat sticks of charcoal and crack open my globby tubes of paint.

dragonfly (2010.03.04):

pomegranate (2010.03.07):

papillon (2010.03.09):

cardoon (2010.03.12):

This book was one of those ‘should-reads’ I’ve had sitting on my shelf for a few years – a significant, widely-known piece of literature that I somehow missed in the course of all my high school and college English classes.  And so I set aside Anne of Green Gables (yes, I picked these old classics up during a nostalgic impulse), assumed my most literary attitude, and gave 1984 a go.  The fact that I was reading out of some kind of self-imposed obligation, rather than desire, made me fear that I might not enjoy the book all that much.  But it was actually quite fascinating.  A little slow at times, and certainly darker than what I usually read, but I found the characters and the underlying commentary on socialism/communism/totalitarianism and the role of government really, really interesting.  The book, which was published in 1949, takes place in the then-future year of 1984, a time when the government (the ‘Party’) knows all and rules all, via constant surveillance of all its members, incessant broadcasting of Party propaganda, and relentless fear mongering used to justify never-ending wars.  People are constantly warned that ‘Big Brother is Watching You.’  Creepy.  But – wait…  Fast-forward to 2010, and do we not now live in a nation where a large percentage of the population carries GPS-linked phones and laptops?  Add to that the constant onslaught of advertising and filtered news that we face every day in the form of radio, TV, the Internet, and poster-plastered buses, and the premise of 1984 is not so unimaginable.  I’m certainly not leading a revolution, and I’m thankful for the freedoms that I often take for granted, but the parallels here between the fiction and reality are certainly interesting.  Food for thought…

For years now, I have struggled to find an exercise regime that is both challenging and achievable.  I am a stellar goal-setter, but my follow-through has always been lacking.  However, I think I’ve finally settled into a routine that works for me – run and some kind of weight-training two times a week, and one hour of yoga or pilates at least once a week.  I’ve been on this kick for six months now, and I’m feeling good.  So good, in fact, that I decided I need to step it up just one more notch.  My legs and core are getting the work-out they deserve, but when it comes to arms, I’m all noodle-y.  I’m that girl that gets on one of the lifting machines, sets it to the absolute lowest weight possible, does about four-and-a-half reps while making that squinty ‘this-is-so-hard’ face, wipes my brow, and then heads over to the balance ball or that fantastic obliques/twisty machine.  I get a bit of an arm work out when I do yoga, but spending 10 or 15 minutes in downward-facing dog isn’t cutting it.  I’m still feelin’ weak.  And so, in some act of ambitious insanity, I have decided to do the 100 push-up challenge.  The deal is: follow the schedule for six weeks, and at the end of the training, you should be able to do 100 consecutive push-ups.  Shane is doing it, as well as a couple of different friends of ours, and so I hopped on the bandwagon in hopes of turning my spaghetti arms into lean, mean push-up machines.  Tonight was my first night, and I struggled through my sets of twos and threes, but I did it, with the added challenge of having a husband that likes to watch and critique my push-up form (so you all know I’m not getting away with my usual wimpy knees-down push-ups).  Should I mention that I felt like I strained myself just flexing for this photo?  Seriously, this will be interesting…

After our tour de Santa Barbara, we headed north to San Luis Obispo on Friday afternoon to meet up with Amanda and Josh, who were also getting into town that evening.  While we waited for them to get in, Shane and I took a quick spin through the Cal Poly campus for a stroll down memory lane.  Wandering through the architecture building was a total blast from the past – I poked my head into the studio where I spent what felt like every waking hour of my last year at school, and when I saw the desks strewn with cool models and crazy sketches, I felt a little pang of longing for old times.  Then I stood on the same little balcony from which I remember making hundreds of stressed-out late-night calls to Shane, and saw the grungy old couch which I napped on when I was working in the studio until 4 a.m. and couldn’t trust myself to head home and make it back for my 8 a.m. class, and I was thankful that those days are behind me.

Amanda and Josh arrived that evening, and once we were all checked into our hotel room, we headed toward downtown to hit up Firestone’s for dinner – their tri-tip sandwich was a protein staple in my college diet, and I’ve been craving this meaty goodness ever since I left.  Deeeee-lish.  When we left the bar, it was pouring rain, so we decided to just head back to the hotel to hang out and veg.  Even though Amanda and I hadn’t seen each other since June, it never takes us more than 15 minutes to feel like we’ve never been apart, and it felt good to have a low-key night together, just talking and laughing.  I’ve missed her.

Saturday morning, I had only one mission: coffee at my favorite cafe in downtown SLO.  Shane and I were up bright and early-ish to hit up Linnea’s Cafe.  I was happy to find that the place was relatively unchanged – still cozy, still serving good coffee, and still inhabited by the same intriguing man that has sat at the same table every day for years now, hunched over his journal, in which he writes/draws symbols unlike any language I’ve ever seen before (I’m betting all of my old Cal Poly peeps know exactly who I’m talking about).

After coffee and a short stroll through downtown, the skies cleared and the sun came out, and we were all beach-bound, intent on grabbing lunch at Splash Cafe in Pismo Beach.  Their clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl was another staple in my college diet (the term ‘Freshman Fifteen’ exists for a reason), and again, I was not disappointed.  However, I was slightly disappointed when we left the restaurant to walk on the beach, only to find that all beach access was closed for the day, due to the coast-wide tsunami warnings.  Bummer.  But we got over it quickly enough, ’cause we had a wedding to get to.

The wedding was fabulous.  The bride was my old friend Jenny, whom I’ve known since high school, when we used to type messages to each other on our calculators in high school math class.  We were roommates during our freshman year at Cal Poly, and though we haven’t seen each other since Shane I got married almost four years ago, I was thrilled to be a part of her special day, which was so wonderfully ‘Jenny-ish’.  Francine, another one of my best friends from high school, was also there, and our little reunion was so much fun.  When I say, ‘We all go waaaay back together’, I really mean it, and it was fun to reminisce.

Sunday was our last day in Cali, and we took advantage of it by heading up the coast to see the elephant seals near San Simeon.  There is this stretch of beach that is home to hundreds of elephant seals, and driving up highway 1 to go see them is a favorite Central Coast pastime.  They were out in full force on Sunday, even closer to shore because of high tide.  The four of us spent nearly an hour just watching them lounge around in the sun, then occasionally flop across the beach to get in the water or play with one of their mates.  They are amazing animals – the males can get up to 20 feet long and can weigh as much as 8,000 pounds, and they have these horribly-ugly-but-still-kind-of-cute hooked snouts that wave around a little bit when they raise their heads in the air to bark.

After our seal-gazing, it was time to say good-bye to Amanda and Josh and head back down to Santa Barbara to catch our flight home.  One last walk on the beach when we got to SB, and then I was officially bummed to be leaving California.  What a weekend…

When Shane and I received a wedding invitation from an old friend of mine, stating that she would be getting married in San Luis Obispo at the end of February, we looked at each other and said, “Do you think we should go?” Approximately 2.5 seconds later, we both nodded our heads with an emphatic “HECK YES.” It would be a great chance to celebrate with several old and dear friends, to revisit my old stompin’ grounds (I hadn’t been back to SLO since I graduated a few years ago), and to enjoy a romantic little weekend getaway. And so we bought our tickets, packed our flip-flops and sunglasses, and we were off.

We flew into Santa Barbara and decided that we would spend Thursday night there, before joining our friends in SLO on Friday. Neither one of us had spent any time in Santa Barbara, and we were looking forward to checking out the beaches, the food, and the wine country. Our plane arrived at Santa Barbara airport at 4:15 p.m., and Shane, being the stellar planner that he is, had already picked out a place nearby where we could grab a couple of drinks and catch the 5:51 p.m. sunset. We hopped in our rental car and were off to Hendry’s Beach. The second I stepped out of the car, smelled the salt of the ocean, heard the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, and saw the sun glinting off the expanse of water, I was smitten. It was then that I realized how much I’d been missing the Central Coast. After a margarita and a sunset walk on the sand, I was ready to call up my office and let them know that I would not be returning to work anytime in the near future – I was in the midst of some serious beach lust (as in, lusting after the beach, in case that came out wrong).

We spent the rest of the evening on State Street, enjoying tacos at Lilly’s, then drinks and dessert at Pascucci and then Palazzio. From the novelty of the labio tacos (translation: lip – Shane was bolder than I in ordering this one) at Lilly’s, to the decadence of the creme brulee at Pascucci, to the richness of the wine that we shared at Palazzio, it was a perfect night.

Friday morning we took advantage of the free bikes that our hotel had for check-out and hopped on a couple of beach-cruisers to head down to the water for breakfast. There can’t be anything more Californian than riding a bike down State Street in your flip-flops, zipping past palm trees and trendy little boutiques, loving the feel of the sun on your face and that cool, coastal breeze in your hair. Heaven. After a 3-mile ride, we arrived at East Beach Grill, where I ordered a heap of wheatgerm banana pancakes (an ode to Jack Johnson), settled into my chair just inches from the sandy beach, and chowed down. Again, heaven.

After breakfast, we headed back to the hotel, packed up our things, and pointed our car north, in search of the perfect glass of Santa Barbara wine. The hills northwest of Santa Barbara are scattered with tons of wineries, big and small, and without a real agenda in hand, we decided we’d just head in the direction of Los Olivos and see what struck our fancy. We hit five wineries and tasted over 30 wines that afternoon – my favorite was the Zaca Mesa Estate Roussanne, and Shane loved the Merlot from Curtis. The landscape was absolutely beautiful, with its rolling green hills and small, rocky mountains.

Once our tongues were sufficiently coated with tannins and our teeth disturbingly purple, we decided it was time to make the rest of the trek up to San Luis Obispo. However, many of you know that no visit to California is complete without a stop at In-N-Out burger, so a pitstop in Santa Maria for some quality fast-food goodness was in order. You can see Shane eyeing me with that “Let me just eat my burger” look:

We arrived in SLO on Friday evening, but I will save our adventures there for another post – I am wiped out tonight, still recovering from the bliss of such a perfect weekend…

Fourteen years ago, I decided in my Freshman ‘Careers and Goals’ class that I wanted to be an architect.  I can’t remember my exact reasoning in choosing this career path (very well might have been as superficial as, ‘oh, that sounds cool…’), but I stuck by my decision and took high school drafting and art classes, in hopes of increasing my chances of getting into a good college architecture program.  Ten years ago, I began my five-year education at California Polytechnic State University (which was recently voted number three among architecture programs in the nation – woot!), embarking on some of the most challenging, most inspiration-filled, most creatively formative years of my life.  Four-and-a-half years ago, I was offered my first real architecture job in Seattle and was put to work building models and drawing details for a large research building in South Lake Union.  Two years ago, I registered for my first architectural licensing exam, and walked into the testing center with my palms sweating and my heart beating about a million times per minute.  Last month I got notice that I had passed my ninth and final exam, and Shane and I jumped up in down in the kitchen as I waved my pass letter around with utter relief.  On Thursday I received my architectural license in the mail, authorizing me to finally, after all these years of learning and growing and working and waiting, officially call myself an ‘Architect’.  Wow, what a journey, filled with so many ups and downs.  There were bumps in the road, when I felt like my brain was going to be rattled right out of my head, and then there were wide open stretches of freeway, when I felt like the world was my oyster.  But I got through it all and am grateful for how the process has grown and refined me.

So…now what?  To be honest, despite the achievement of this milestone, I still have much to learn/do/see/accomplish.  This piece of paper isn’t going to immediately change my life, make my job all that different, or endow me with some kind of designer super-powers – right now, it’s just a piece of paper.  But it’s also validation that I have worked my butt off and officially achieved a goal that I set way back in 1995, when I was sitting in a little classroom in Central California and trying to answer the question ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’.  And that’s pretty cool.

Today was one of those days when I am indescribably happy to live in Seattle – a couple of reasons why:

Columbia City has a new ice cream shop – it’s called Full Tilt and it serves flavors like horchata, salted caramel, and purple yam, scooped into made-to-order waffle cones.  Deeeeee-lish.

The sun was out today, and we found a perfect little dock in Leschi from which to soak up some rays.

While in Leschi, we discovered that Daniel’s Broiler has a great happy hour – beer, bacon-wrapped scallops, and a killer view of Mount Rainier.  Shane’s face says it all…

On our way home, we swung by our favorite little viewpoint to get one last look at the mountain in all its glory.

After today, Shane is apparently convinced that he wants to live in Seattle forever.  Assuming we can’t find a way to make a living in Paris, I think I might agree.

Shane has this saying that he uses when he hears a song or watches a show that really gets to him – he brings his fist to his chest, squints his eyes, and says, with much emotion, ‘awwww, yeah – this speaks to my soul!’.  It happened the other night when ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’ by Led Zeppelin came on the radio, then again when we watched a particularly poignant episode of Wonder Years.  I love his ability to be deeply affected by music (and I especially love the air guitar solo that usually accompanies such affected-ness), and I often laugh at the way that he can so intensely relate his own experiences to those seen on television (apparently Shane’s growing-up years are reminiscent of Kevin Arnold’s adolescent struggles)…  And so I started thinking: what speaks to my soul?

My first answer for television is easy – we have been rewatching the final season of Six Feet Under, and nearly every single episode has brought me to tears.  And I’m not talking just one glistening drop – the last episode we watched had me doing the full-on heaving, sobbing, uncontrollable ‘ugly cry’.  The writing on this show is brilliant – to the point that I have actually convinced myself that I know the Fisher family and just might run into them next time I’m in L.A.  I wouldn’t say that I really identify with any of the characters (which is probably a good thing, since they are all a little bit (or a lot) crazy), and yet, I am so invested in all of them.  So soul-speakingly good.  Some good friends of ours are also avid fans and we have a date tonight to watch the show’s finale together.  I have been looking forward to it all week – and I will be arriving at their house with my pockets full of Kleenex.

My second choice is slightly less sophisticated, but for the sake of full disclosure, I will admit that I loved Felicity.  It’s true.  I never really watched the show when it was airing on TV, but I rented all of the seasons a few years ago and devoted many hours to following the Felicity-Ben/Felicity-Noel/Felicity-Ben/Felicity-Noel saga.  I’m not going to try to justify my affection for this cheesy adolescent drama, I will just say that for some reason that I’m unable to pinpoint, I adored Felicity, in all her fickleness, and often found myself wanting to be a part of her New York City college experience.  There, I said it.

Now, for music: the first artist that pops into my head is Damien Rice – his album O in particular.  The music is beautiful, but the memories I have associated with it are what really get to me.  I can so clearly remember listening to this album on my iPod as I was riding the Metro to and from French class during my first month in Paris.  Makes me smile, in a longing-for-past-days kind of way.  Proof that sometimes the memories associated with a song are just as moving as the music itself.

Ryan Adams is another favorite – his talent for song-writing is beyond amazing, and his voice is so wonderfully wrought with emotion.  When I’m at work and ‘The Sun Also Sets’ or ‘Oh My Sweet Carolina’ come on my iPod, it’s all I can do to keep from embarrassing myself by belting out the bluesy lyrics.  We saw him at the Paramount a couple of years ago, and it goes down as one of the best shows I’ve ever seen.  I have a hard time picking out a favorite album, but Heartbreaker is the one I’m most recently putting on repeat.

Finally, I can’t complete this list without paying tribute to Smashing Pumpkins.  Turn off your lights, lay on your bed, crank up ‘Disarm’, and you will know what I’m talking about.  When I got my braces off in 8th grade and was asked what color/pattern I wanted my retainer to be, I chose blue plastic with glittery starts and moons, because it reminded me of the album cover of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.  How’s that for a fan story?  I played Siamese Dream over and over and over during my freshman year of high school.  Then again during my last year of college.  And now it’s found it’s way onto my playlist once again.  Timeless.

This is the top of my list – what’s at the top of yours?